


while it burns

by brightabandon



Category: Night In The Woods (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:47:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28151124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brightabandon/pseuds/brightabandon
Summary: Gregg skips class to hang out with his friends.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	while it burns

**Author's Note:**

  * For [plastics](https://archiveofourown.org/users/plastics/gifts).



All day Gregg's been itching inside of his skin, too restless to sit still. By lunchtime the need to get out and do something is almost physical. He grabs lunch from the cafeteria and tosses his milk expertly a foot to the left of the trash can—whoops, that’s not what he meant to do. Going and putting the milk properly in the trash would be a pain, though, so he doesn’t, just stuffs a slice of cardboardy pizza in his mouth and jets.

Angus’ lunch is an hour later than Gregg’s, so Gregg pulls the fire alarm.

Dodging teachers, he pushes through the crowd to wait for Angus on the side lawn, by the dead patch of grass where Jenny Porter puked at Homecoming three years ago. The lawn fills up with people way too quickly; he almost misses it when Angus walks right out into the parking lot as though he’s meant to be there.

“Angus!” Gregg calls, running to meet him. “Come skip school with me!”

Angus shushes him even though nobody’s going to hear them over the fire alarm, but he also reaches out and grabs Gregg’s hand. Gregg laces his fingers through Angus’s, but Angus is walking too slowly so he has to let go a second later.

Gregg runs ahead and hauls himself up the chain-link fence that surrounds the school; wires bite coldly at his palms and snag his clothing, leaving little rips. He knows from bitter experience that the razor wire coiled at the top will totally cut him up if he’s not careful, so in a medal-worthy act of self-restraint he delicately lifts himself over without touching it, limb by limb.

Once he’s negotiated the razor wire, he flings himself off the fence, rolling when he hits the ground, and looks back to check that Angus is managing alright. Angus is managing better than alright, it turns out: Angus found a gate. Angus walked right through the gate and didn’t have to risk cutting himself on the wire and probably getting tetanus and dying at _all_. Angus, Gregg reflects, is probably smarter than him.

“Do you want to stop at the Clik-Clak for a superior alternative to school lunches?” Angus asks, proving that he is indeed a genius. Gregg’s about to say yes when he realizes they totally forgot Mae.

“We forgot Mae!” he announces.

“Were we bringing Mae?”

“Yeah! We’re going to hang out with her and Casey and do arson or something and it’ll be awesome!”

“Well, I don’t know about the arson,” Angus says, but he’s smiling so Gregg figures they can probably still do a little bit of arson. He pulls out his phone and texts Mae— _come hang with me at caseys, angus says we can do arson maybe_ —then has to jump over a streetlight that’s lying across the sidewalk and nearly drops his phone. Angus catches it for him and he hugs Angus right there in the street.

* * *

Mae’s already there when they get to Casey’s; she’s trying to climb up to his bedroom window, even though it’s on the second floor and she’ll totally break her neck.

“Heads up, Mae!” Gregg calls, and throws a rock at Casey’s window. It thunks into the wall of the house instead, which is just as well now that Gregg thinks about it because Casey’s parents would totally make him pay to replace the window, but it works to get Casey’s attention. He waves at them through the window then comes down and lets them in.

”Hey dudes,” he says, “you skipping class?”

”Hell yeah,” Gregg tells him, offering a high-five. Their palms hit perfectly on target and Gregg waves his hand to get rid of the sting.

“Dude,” says Casey, “I’ve been thinking, I’ve got a drum set and Mae’s got that bass, and I could lend you my dad’s old guitar, and we could start a band.” It’s the best idea Gregg’s ever heard.

* * *

Casey already has a bunch of different amps, but Mae makes Gregg lug hers over to Casey’s place anyway. It weighs probably a hundred pounds and his arms feel like they’re going to fall off by the time they make it to the top of the hill, let alone to Casey’s. He gets his revenge though when he slips in a puddle and almost drops the amp; Mae’s face goes white like she’s seeing a ghost and she grabs the amp from him and checks all over it for damage. It landed on top of Gregg so it’s fine and really it’s _Gregg_ Mae should be worried about it but whatever.

“Too bad you didn’t get hit in the head and die,” she says, so he knows it’s fine.

”Too bad you didn’t get eaten by a sinkhole,” he tells her companionably.

”Too bad you didn’t get struck by a freak bolt of lightning.”

”Too bad a vampire didn’t drink all your blood.”

”Dude, no, too real.”

* * *

Casey’s drums are already set up by the time Gregg and Mae get back to his place, and he’s sitting on the edge of his bed tuning a guitar. He hands it over and Gregg strums a couple of chords, posing like a rock star. Angus gives him a solemn thumbs-up, but Casey wrinkles his face and grabs the guitar back to re-tune it. Gregg scribbles out a song while Casey works, just to have something to do with his hands. It’s not very good but he hands it off to Angus anyway.

“Space dragon,” sings Angus, his epic rockstar growl making Gregg’s dumb lyrics sound like they’re from a real song, “flying through spaaaace…. Dragon in an awesome plaaaace…. Space dragon.” Okay, Gregg’s going to have to work on that one. Not right now though. Right now they’re having their first practice together as a band, and it’s awesome!

Casey clashes his cymbals to punctuate Angus’s words, and Gregg strums the guitar until his fingers feel like they’re bleeding. Mae plays half a beat slow, but it actually doesn’t sound too bad. They’re going to be the best rock band Possum Springs has ever seen, Gregg can tell.

* * *

Gregg feels a lot calmer after they practice but he's still restless, so he and Casey head out to the train tracks and flatten pennies. The rumble of the trains is soothing somehow; he tells Casey that and Casey nods and says he knows exactly how Gregg feels. They work out melodies for songs in the dust until it gets too dark to see, and Gregg gets ready to head home feeling better than he's felt all week.

Unseen birds chirp in the dusk; he slows his pace and puts his hands in his pockets, enjoying the sound. The mountains are dim outlines in the distance. The moon rose while he and Casey were drawing in the dust; it’s a bright crescent, lighting things just enough that Gregg doesn’t stumble as he walks. It's perfect.


End file.
